We are pleased to announce that Steve Gullberg, renowned archaeoastronomer and PACS instructor, was inducted into the International Astronomical Union (IAU) at its General Assembly this August.
The IAU is a group of astronomers whose mission is to promote and safeguard the science of astronomy in all its aspects through international cooperation. The group oversees worldwide astronomy, defines astronomical constants and designates names for new discoveries. It also decided Pluto was no longer a planet.
Gullberg’s Ph.D. in astronomy made him eligible for consideration, but it is his research in archaeoastronomy that will be of particular value to the IAU. A growing field, archaeoastronomy studies how ancient societies understood the phenomena in the sky, as well as the role it played in their cultures.
After his acceptance, Gullberg was assigned to working groups regarding stars and stellar physics and galaxies and cosmology. “I’ll be dealing with the properties of stars of all masses and evolutionary stages and the physical mechanisms involved,” he explained. “As for galaxies and cosmology, I’ll be looking at the early universe, various cosmological models, dark matter, dark energy and star formation.”
Gullberg’s work was recently featured inMediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry.He has also submitted a paper for the Sophia Center Press in Wales, and is working on another to be published by the University Press of Colorado. He looks forward to attending conferences in Honolulu and Rome this year.
